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Chinese villagers rage at privacy invasion

Tom Phillips , Shanghai

Villagers in southern China are furious after local officials published a list of each family's preferred method of contraception, claiming it would help to enforce the country's one-child policy.

"It shows a total disregard for our privacy," one victim, named as Miss Xiang, told Guangdong province's South-ern Metropolis newspaper this week.

"Our names, ID numbers, home addresses and methods of birth control have all been published."

The list, put up on a bulletin board in a village in the city of Dongguan, gave the names and ages of married couples and detailed whether local women had been sterilised or whether they used condoms or contraceptive coils. It was removed after Chinese media visited the village this week.

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"The villagers' right to privacy was violated," Zhan Zhongle, a Peking University law professor, told the Beijing-based Global Times. "It was illegal for the local government to disclose the private information for the good of family planning work."

Tang Guohui, the village committee's chief, blamed the list's publication on incompetent computer technicians. "Our computer operator has just come to work here and does not know much," he told Guangdong's Southern Television. "We didn't realise that we were leaking the villagers' private details."

In future, "another approach" would be used to ensure locals were complying with government family planning regulations, he added.

China's one-child policy was introduced in 1979 following a 1950s baby boom that provoked fears of a demographic crisis if the number of births was not brought under control.

But there have been growing calls for it to be scrapped. Last October, a think tank with close links to China's Communist Party urged the government to abandon the controversial policy, which has been blamed for a spike in sex-selective abortions and even infanticide.

"Making the jump to two children is only a matter of time now," said a report issued by the China Development Research Foundation.